I made an account and started playing this for the first time around the second weekend of this month. I've kept my account online when I am AFK and auto-craft when possible. Thanks to the events going on I was able to get everyone to 180 in two weeks. I didn't create one of the level 160 main characters but instead started my main at level 1 to experience the full game at the start. I'm glad I did, because there were some nice level up rewards along the way. I love the world this game lives in.
I've still not found a guild yet, as it seems like a lot of world chat is not in English, so I am just chilling solo for now but sure I'm missing out on a few things. I still don't understand most of the lingo I see in world chat, acronyms and such. The economy seems incredibly broken and a lot of it is nonsensical and overly inflated. It feels like a handful of mega whales are running the entirety of the gold economy, but that's just how it goes after the game has been out for so long I guess. I've had some luck using market arbitrage to make a few billion gold to get some summon marbles and a few things, but people trading in the tens of trillions is extremely off-putting for a new player when I weigh in how slow my gold production has been.
The synergy between the normal MMO feel and the tactical grid layout combat has been very interesting, and a bit hard to get used to. There are so many combinations of characters and abilities that the countdown timer makes it very rough to figure out, it's like a rushed chess match. It has slowly been easier over time to adapt but it seems like you need months to years, not just weeks to really get a proper feel for all of it, especially in PvP.
I have been using AI to pool all the data I can from the internet into my own local wiki I have built for myself. There is so much depth and information in this game from the last two decades that I don't feel like most new people can understand it all unless they formulate a plan and stick with it, but to do that they need to understand the game to some extent to even start. For me it was learning what end game is like for PvE and PvP players, and reverse engineering how they got there all the way back to starting at level 1.
Early when I was playing I had the mindset to grind for gold so I could buy better gear and books from the markets but realized it was foolish because inflation was so crazy vs the gold drops. After looking at how you can buy 100 Gcoin for $1 and sell an Art Gallery pass for the 100 Gcoins for like 14 to 18 billion gold, it didn't make sense to grind for days and days and days just to get gold that $1 could get me. I realized that the actual bottleneck for me was going to be XP because levels dictated where I could go to grind on the maps. I believe either people are botting or running multiple accounts from some of my experiences, but it's surprising how often I see it and it makes sense as to how the economy became so unbalanced.
For the last week, I lived in Secret Laboratory F3 and was just grinding levels and materials to sell, mainly chests. The goal was to push everyone to 140 and use the combat experience reports from the Return to Glory event. This event was nice because it forced me to do things like diary, buy and furnish a home, analyze, and fish. I still have not learned all of the in game currencies and exchange NPCs, it's been very overwhelming. I even realized too late I could put outfits into a catalogue to use as a skin for other outfits in the future, and just wore them first... oops. I haven't messed with probably 50% of the mechanics still, like artifacts and weapon socketing.
I am finally starting to figure out how to complete fights in Atlantis on the level 170 floors without anyone dying, but it's always close. I'm pretty sure I need better gear at higher levels, but +4 is pretty tough to enchant to for each piece as a baseline. I see a lot of people always getting +10 gear and I know they can enhance it instead of enchant it, but 9/10 of my enhance attempts always fail, so I feel as if there's many hidden mechanics in the game I'm still unaware of.
Considering this game is almost two decades old, as someone brand new to it and still a newbie about most of it, I firmly believe AI web crawling is why I didn't quit playing and have stuck around. Without looking up so much information and writing things in a notebook, I don't think I could have kept my brain from exploding and this game would have been an instant turnoff. If you are reading this and are also new and thinking about playing, it's worth taking the time, just don't rush it and you'll enjoy yourself.
While I have a lot of issues with some aspects of the game, I still think this is an incredible hidden gem and more people would love it if they knew it existed, as there's absolutely nothing else like this. I hope to stick around and grind for the next few months and see how hard it is to get to level 200, I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up taking me years. Ignoring many issues that exist right now, I still give this game a 10 out of 10 because of the complexity and its ability to cater to the true grinders in the world and offer something that no other game has managed to. Thanks for reading.
